The Daily Caller reported late Tuesday that an unnamed Chinese firm operating in the Washington, DC, area hacked Clinton’s private server and obtained “nearly all her emails.” Trump quickly seized on the report to call on federal law enforcement to investigate the matter. The report that Trump was using cited two anonymous sources briefed on the matter, though Trump himself said hours later on Twitter that stories based on anonymous sources are “fiction.”

CNN has reached out to the White House and National Security Council for comment.

The FBI’s statement to all media directly disputing Trump’s claim was a rare move that did not go unnoticed by former law enforcement officials.

“As chief executive, the President has access to every piece of classified information in the holdings of the US government,” said Josh Campbell, a CNN analyst and former FBI Supervisory Special Agent. “In the amount of time it took him to draft a tweet spreading unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo, he could have picked up the phone and gotten the actual story from the agency heads who report to him.”

The Chinese foreign ministry responded on Wednesday to Trump’s claim, saying it opposes “all forms of cyberattacks” and that “China is a champion of cybersecurity.”

During a daily press conference in Beijing on Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Hua Chunying, told reporters that the accusations were “nothing new” and that the “cyber issue is a global one” that “needs to be addressed by all countries.”

“It was a serious concern of ours for reasons I can’t get into. But we never found the evidence that — technical indicators — that there was penetration by an adversary of that system,” Comey said when asked about China or others reading Clinton’s emails.